Nicholas Thomas is director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and professor of historical anthropology, at Cambridge University, and has traveled widely in the Pacific. Among his books is Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook.
"Thomas’ description of the journey into the imperial world of the
Pacific is made inclusive and companionable with lovely asides… [a]
comprehensive but gripping book"—Katrina Schlunke, Times Higher
Education Supplement
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
"Islanders is not only a fine work of scholarship but also a lucid
and engrossing read."—Rod Edmond, BBC History Magazine
*BBC History Magazine*
“The islanders’ minds and feelings may be inaccessible in purely
anthropological terms, but Thomas provides ample evidence to allow
readers to fill in the gaps.”—Dr. Andrew Rudd, Church Times
*Church Times*
Joint winner of the 2010 Wolfson History Prize given by the Wolfson
Foundation
*Wolfson Foundation*
"Intellectually sophisticated and clearly written, this first-rate
study of the experience of the Pacific Islanders provides one of
the best available studies of the nature of imperial contact and
violence, and of the traumas they caused.”—Jeremy Black, University
of Exeter
*Jeremy Black*
"We are used to idea of thinking of the Pacific in the age of
exploration and empire as a play-pond for the greed, ambition and
curiosity of Europeans, but now Nicholas Thomas has produced a
bracing revision that - Antipodean-like - inverts many of our
assumptions about the Islanders that they supposedly discovered and
exploited. Drawing on a lifetime of research, and in vivid sinewy
prose, he brings to life an unknown world of Islander explorers,
adventurers, traders, sailors, whalers, warriors, priests and
migrants - peoples who criss-crossed every ocean and whose stories
have never made it into Hakluyt or any voyage anthology. Surely it
is these Pacific Islanders, rather than we European intruders, who
deserve to be seen as the world's first cosmopolitans." - Iain
McCalman, author of Darwin's Armada: Four Voyages and the Battle
for the Theory of Evolution
*Iain McCalman*
“Islanders tells the compelling, sometimes shocking, story of the
western world's impact on the peoples of Oceania before 1900. Using
all the evidence now available, Thomas shows that the lives of
individuals, both Pacific islanders and European newcomers, were
profoundly altered as the contact became more persistent and
intrusive. Explorers, missionaries, traders and officials jostled
for status and profit in their relationship with islanders -
chiefly, priestly and otherwise - who in turn pursued their own
interests in the years before catastrophic population decline
changed the islands for ever. Islanders will appeal to specialists
and non-specialists alike as a scintillating contribution not only
to Pacific history, but to the general study of relations between
European and non-European peoples.” - Glyn Williams, author of The
Great South Sea
*Glyn Williams*
"Beautifully written, with spell-binding vignettes. An important,
original controbution to our knowledge of life in the Pacific." -
Dame Anne Salmond, author of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain
Cook in the South Seas
*Anne Salmond*
"Enjoyably readable."—G.E. Marcus, Choice
*Choice*
“Thomas has written a work of scholarship that merits close
attention and, at the same time, that presumes a ready grasp of the
vast geography of the Pacific. His analysis is thoughtful and often
thought-provoking.”—Tim Severin, Irish Examiner
*Irish Examiner*
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